Marquette Warrior

We are here to provide an independent, rather skeptical view of events at Marquette University. Comments are enabled on most posts, but extended comments are welcome and can be e-mailed to jmcadams2@juno.com. E-mailed comments will be treated like Letters to the Editor.
This site has no official connection with Marquette University. Indeed, when University officials find out about it, they will doubtless want it shut down.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Marquette Backs Away from Language About Student “Resistance” to Indoctrination

This started when a Marquette official sent out a notice about a campus speaker. The title of his speech was listed as “Freedom Dreams Now: Black Lives, Brown Lives, Native Lives: All Lives Matter!” Since “All Lives Matter” is politically incorrect, she quickly sent out, less than an our later, a “correction” and “apology” that changed “All Lives Matter” to “Whose Lives Matter.” Here is the first e-mail, and here is the abject apology.

Particularly arrogant is the language about “strategies for responding to student resistance to learning about the protest strategies of these groups.” Translation: students might resist being indoctrinated with a Black Lives Matter agenda, and so such “resistance” must be overcome. For these folks, there is no legitimate disagreement with their agenda.

Joseph Brown, S.J.

Fr. Brown, head of the Black American Studies Program at Southern Illinois University, urged fellow Catholics and educators to remember King’s legacy by meeting their obligation to love the less fortunate. He also challenged Boston College to institute a “humanities core for the 21st century” that would require students to take two courses apiece in black studies, women’s studies and Hispanic studies, as well as courses in Native American, Asian and other multicultural topics.

Right. Who needs courses in math, science, philosophy or anything else when you can get 30 semester hours or so learning how straight, white, cisgender males have always oppressed everybody else.

He goes on:

In the course of his remarks, Fr. Brown sharply criticized what he described as the injustice inherent in the American capitalist system, and compared the current political era with the 1890s, when post-Civil War civil rights laws were rolled back and Jim Crow became entrenched.

“There is a profit to be made from inequality. That’s the American way of life,” said Fr. Brown. He maintained that those on welfare are not there as a result of “moral failure,” but are kept there by the forces of capital as a labor reserve to keep the employed in check. “You’ve got to keep the mob as a threat to control those who work for you,” he said.

He also cited several large American corporations that he claimed profit by keeping young black men in jail, and suggested that college graduates who go to work for such corporations are complicit in an economic system that is the modern-day moral equivalent of slavery.

Fr. Brown added that King’s most oft-quoted phrase has been reduced to meaninglessness.

. . .

“He didn’t get killed because he said, ‘I have a dream,’” Fr. Brown said of King. “He got killed because he said we have to restructure the economy of America.”

The writer goes on to say that Brown’s “strident and sometimes tongue-in-cheek delivery drew an enthusiastic response from the audience.”

Conclusion

The use of the word “resistance” was a Freudian slip by Marquette bureaucrats. They know that many students (if they are unfortunate enough to even be exposed to these speakers) will resent the extreme leftist indoctrination. And a vigorous airing of alternative viewpoints would undermine the entire project. So the students must be made to conform. If they resist one-sided persuasion, the guilting and bullying will begin. Resistance to “social justice” must be expunged.

How Did it Happen?

It would be nice to know who first decided that a Christmas tree could not be called a “Christmas Tree.” But Mary Janz, Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life (the office that oversees the Residence Hall Association, which sponsored the event), has not responded to a request for an explanation of the policy, who made it, and how it was made.

Likewise, University spokesman Brian Dorrington did not immediately respond to a request for a statement about the change of policy that allowed “Christmas.”

The banning of “Christmas Tree” probably did not come from top University officials. More likely, some Residence Life official decided that “Christmas Tree” was not sufficiently “inclusive.” But that is the problem. The campus bureaucracy is dominated by the kind of people who define “inclusive” as requiring the exclusion of things explicitly Christian.

Update

I attend Marquette and this is the actual text from the E-mail we received, “Reminder: Residence Hall Association to hold annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony tonight

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The Residence Hall Association will hold its annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, “Igniting Hope,” on Monday, Nov. 28, at 5 p.m. in Westowne Square. The ceremony will include speakers, performances and the tree lighting. A reception, including musical performances, crafts and snacks, will follow from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the AMU Monaghan Ballrooms.

Angela Davis to Speak at Marquette

It came as a bit of a surprise, but should not have: an e-mail from the Marquette Provost that Angela Davis is coming to Marquette to speak as a part of a series of Marquette Forum events called Freedom Dreams Now.

In 1970, Davis was a party to a murderous plot to allow some of her Black Panther cohorts to escape from custody in California. According to Wikipedia:

Davis was a supporter of the Soledad Brothers, three inmates accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad Prison.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, a heavily armed, 17-year-old African-American high-school student, gained control over a courtroom in Marin County, California. Once in the courtroom, Jackson armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and two black convicts away from the courtroom, the police began shooting at the vehicle. The judge and the three black men were killed in the melee; one of the jurors and the prosecutor were injured. The firearms which Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun used to kill Judge Haley, had been purchased by Davis two days prior and the barrel of the shotgun had been sawn off. Davis was found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved.

As California considers “all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense ... principals in any crime so committed,” Marin County Superior Judge Peter Allen Smith charged Davis with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley” and issued a warrant for her arrest.

Is There Anything Wrong With This?

We have long said that there is nothing wrong with a Klansman speaking on a college campus. So why not a communist?

In the first place, Marquette has put Davis on a program that claims to be a serious discussion of racial issues in America. Given that Marquette has not lined up a group of speakers with competing views, inviting her looks like an endorsement. Indeed, unwilling to tell the truth about Davis, Marquette puts a highly-sanitized blurb on its website:

Dr. Angela Davis, a living witness to history and important struggles of our contemporary era, will deliver a distinguished lecture. Davis is a scholar, activist, and sought-after speaker, presenting at dozens of universities including Dartmouth, Stanford, University of Northern Iowa, Lawrence College and Seattle University, a sister Catholic, Jesuit university. She has written eight books; taught at UCLA, UCSC, Vassar and Stanford; and focuses on social justice issues like racism, oppression and prison abolition. Davis has spoken in every state in America. Additional details and registration coming soon.

In the second place, we can’t imagine any university inviting a Klansman who had been involved in a criminal plot that got civil rights workers killed.

A Program of Propaganda

Having an extreme leftist speak as part of a program of competing views would be fine, but the Marquette Forum is essentially nothing but leftist propaganda. It is described as follows:

Marquette University is launching a yearlong series of inclusive conversations, bringing experts of national renown together with those from the Marquette and Milwaukee communities.

Inspired by visions of inclusion and a better world emerging from Black freedom struggles, we hope to look with new eyes at the challenges that inequality presents at the national level and within Milwaukee. As a Catholic, Jesuit university committed to social justice, we seek to energize our campus and engage all Milwaukee’s communities by asking, “What is your freedom dream now?”

The only other listed forthcoming program is described as follows:

Join us for an open screening of the documentary Milwaukee 53206, which explores issues of incarceration and racial justice in a neighborhood on the north side of Milwaukee and the ripple effects of incarceration of men of color on their families and the greater community.

That’s right. This is a program about how it’s bad to lock up black criminals. But in the rarefied world of the politically correct, blacks don’t commit crime at a greater rate than whites. Rather, a racist criminal justice system locks up blacks at a greater rate just because it hates blacks.

It’s ironic that what is described as an “inclusive conversation” excludes any views other than the politically correct. There is no discussion of the fact that 72% of black kids are born out of wedlock, and the disastrous effects of that.
Catholic teaching about sexual morality might be relevant there. But you are not going to see that mentioned at Marquette (except perhaps among this or that small group of conservatives.)

There is no discussion of black on black crime, and the fact that over 90% of homicides of blacks are committed by other blacks.

While Angela Davis is invited to campus (and paid a huge fee) we can’t imagine black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams being invited by Marquette. If they ever come, it will be because some conservative student organization invites them.

Marquette, instead of a free market of ideas, is committed to politically correct indoctrination.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Marquette Won’t Call a Christmas Tree a “Christmas Tree”

The Residence Hall Association will hold its annual tree lighting ceremony, “Igniting Hope,” on Monday, Nov. 28, at 5 p.m. in Westowne Square. The ceremony will include speakers, performances and the tree lighting. A reception, including musical performances, crafts and snacks, will follow from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the AMU Monaghan Ballrooms.

Let’s see: a tree with lights, being lighted in late November. What is it? Obviously a Christmas tree.

And what is missing from the above news blurb? The word “Christmas.”

Maybe somewhere else is an announcement calling this a “Christmas tree,” but the only other one we could find for this event omits “Christmas” also.

So apparently, in 2015, Marquette decided that a Christmas tree was politically incorrect.

Mary Janz, Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life, did not immediately respond to a request for an explanation of this change of policy, who made it, and how it was made.

War on Christmas

Whether a Christmas tree can be called a “Christmas tree” has been a staple of the Culture Wars over the last few decades. At the nation’s Capitol, the National Christmas Tree somehow got renamed the the “Holiday Tree” in the 1990s, but when Republican Dennis Hastert was elected Speaker of the House, he got the tree returned to its original name. Fox News noted:

Calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree has become a politically charged prospect in jurisdictions across the country, from Boston to Sacramento and in dozens of communities in between. The city of Boston changed the name of its Holiday Tree back to Christmas Tree after being threatened with several lawsuits.

While the political correctness has trapped some communities into taking the Christianity out of Christmas in order to accommodate the minority of Americans who don’t celebrate the holiday, the White House continues to call its tree a Christmas Tree.

That “diversity” and “inclusion” require censoring and silencing all things Christian is a typical attitude of the politically correct. Of course, this is not “inclusive,” but rather exclusionary.

Genuine inclusion would mean recognizing the diversity of religious beliefs and traditions. The National Menorah, on public property just south of the White House, is an example. If Muslim students at Marquette wanted to stage events to celebrate Ramadan they would certainly be allowed to by Marquette (although Ramadan is usually in the summer with few students around).

But Christianity is different. Secular leftists don’t much like Christianity.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Academic Rogues Gallery

From Turning Point USA, a conservative student group that has been moderately active on the Marquette campus, a website devoted to rather extreme leftist professors: a Professor Watchlist.

Although we have not checked every entry, the few entries we checked were well-sourced.

Of course, academic freedom gives professors the right to be crazy leftists. But it also gives student organizations the right to call them out. Free speech as an anecdote to academic freedom abused.

But academic freedom does not give professors the right to verbally abuse students. Nor does it give them the right to censor students’ speech by punishing them for using terms like “illegal alien,” or “male,” or “female,” as one intolerant professor did.

At Marquette

This site is an encouraging example of student activism. Political correctness can be countered only by students who are willing to push back loudly and aggressively. It takes a lot of guts to do that, given that the campus left can be vicious, and given that campus bureaucrats are solidly behind the intolerant left. But it can be done.

Jill Stein on Fidel Castro

PASTE: While I have you here, I just wanted to get your reaction to Fidel Castro’s death.

STEIN: It feels like the passing of an era of incredible struggle and he certainly represented the struggle against empire right across the water. Throughout the Caribbean, there’s been an incredible struggle — whether you live in Haiti or in Cuba or even much of the rest of South America, there’s been a great struggle for social justice and it’s been very difficult.

Castro was in many ways the face of that movement, which continues to this day.

Interesting to know that sympathy for Communist movements and regimes, which off-and-on tainted liberalism all during the 20th century, is still around.

Thursday, November 24, 2016

The New Turkeys on Campus

Democrat Identity Politics Backfires

From Reason Magazine, an analysis of the “New Nationalism” from Jonathan Haidt, via the BBC:

Q: And what is it that you think is the outcome of this new division of globalists versus the nationalists because there appears to be not just a sense of acute polarization but actually intolerance on both sides.

Haidt. Yes, I think that there are two disastrous outcomes; two things I am very, very worried about for my country, and for all of the Western democracies; it’s the same thing. One is identity politics on the Left has been brewing for a long time. I’ve been a professor since 1995 at the University of Virginia and now at New York University; so I’ve watched identity politics get stronger and stronger; more focused on matrices of oppression – straight white males this and straight white males that — and after a while, as I forget who pointed out in the current election, if you keep treating white men as an identity group, you keep saying that “they are terrible; they are evil” — eventually they become just like another identity group and they voted their racial interests, in a sense you might say. So identity politics on the Left eventually triggers identity politics on the Right.

Translation: the people whom the elitist liberals despise have revolted.

They resent being called “bitter clingers” or a “basket of deplorables” and they fought back in the one arena were the have the most political power — at the ballot box. This was true of white males (the great villains of identity politics) but also of the women who like their husbands and boyfriends (a majority of married women voted for Trump) and decent people who dislike the racial, gender and sexual hustle.

A Trump vote was a very blunt instrument, since Trump was a deeply flawed candidate, but given the choice between the arrogant elitists and Trump, Americans who were tired of being demeaned, tired of being told they had to accept being victims of discrimination, and tired of being told that they needed to change to be like the elitists, revolted.

Let’s say there was a basketball game and one team won the game by shooting
a lot of three pointers. But the fans of the losing team noticed that their
team would have won had the three pointers only counted as two points each,
and petitioned to change the rules of the game after the fact to give their
team the win. What would anyone think of that behavior?

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Fake Attack on “Fake News”

Remember when Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory? The fake news media which predicted it in order to depress pro-Trump voter turnout certainly does. And so they’re out to fight “fake news.”

By fake news, they don’t mean their own raging torrent of misinformation and lies.

The media has gone to war against Facebook. While various supporters have blamed Hillary’s loss on everything from the FBI to internalized misogyny, the media has decided that Facebook is to blame.

Why Facebook?

Cable news is dying. Newspapers struggle online and offline. The mainstream media’s profitability lives and dies by social media. But the essence of social media is that it allows communities to shape what they see. That’s a terrifying idea if you’re a media conglomerate that depends on its megaphone.

But it’s also scary if you’re a leftist running for office in a country that doesn’t agree with your views.

Obama blamed “messaging” for the election results. But messaging requires being able to reach people. And that means clearing competitive voices out of the social media space by banning conservatives.

The war on conservative media is being conducted under the guise of banishing “fake news” from Facebook. But the fake news devil is in the details. Fake news can mean satire sites like the Onion or the Daily Currant. It can mean foreign clickbait sites that invent fake news. But it can also mean sites from outside the mainstream media whose stories are contested by the left for partisan reason.

The war on fake news is a smoke screen for a campaign against conservative media. And it’s easy to see that it’s conservative sites that are the real target of the Facebook book burners.

Buzzfeed, which depends heavily on Facebook traffic, has fed the “fake news” hysteria. Its list of “fake news” sites includes “hyperpartisan” sites. Its story contrasting “legitimate” mainstream media outlets, a category that somehow includes the Huffington Post, with a variety of right-leaning sites is a major piece of supporting evidence used in the fake news crusade.

Considering BuzzFeed’s history of fake news stories that fit its political narrative, it has no credibility fact checking anyone else. Examinations of BuzzFeed’s own methodology for its fake news article tore it into tiny little shreds. Its claim that fake news outperformed real news turned out to be… fake.

But what’s more important is how quickly the goal posts have been moved from fake news to conservative news, from fraudulent sites to fighting “clickbait” or “hyperpartisan” sites. And it’s clear that these are largely a euphemism for sites on the right that are outperforming the media.

USA Today and the Los Angeles Times promoted a list of “fake news” sites that included a variety of mainstream conservative sites including RedState, IJR and the Blaze. BuzzFeed targeted RightWingNews.

This goes far beyond namecalling. The goal is to ban conservative sites from social media. Or at least to penalize them in ways that will make it difficult for them to compete with the mainstream media.

There are obvious ideological and financial motives behind this war on “fake news.” The financial motives are grossly blatant. The loudest media voices in this war, BuzzFeed, HuffPo and Vox, depend heavily on social media traffic for their own hyperpartisan factually challenged clickbait.

Here’s the top “Real News” stories: “Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?” As the headline suggests, this is a liberal opinion piece, complaining that the media doesn’t report enough on Trump’s scandals.

No. 2 is “Stop Pretending You Don’t Know Why People Hate Hillary Clinton.” This is a rambling screed claiming that people only dislike Clinton because she is a woman.

The No. 3 “Real News” story is “Melania Trump’s Girl-on-Girl Photos From Racy Shoot Revealed,” published at the New York Post.

To be clear, the journalists gnashing their teeth about “Fake Election News” winning would have been less concerned if “Melania Trump’s Girl-on-Girl Photos” had received more clicks.

If this study shows something it’s that the biggest fake news stories get a ton of Facebook engagement — maybe more than the biggest real election stories. (I say “maybe,” because maybe there were stories with more engagement at places like AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, Yahoo News, Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Houston Chronicle, or any of the thousand other news sources not included in the BuzzFeed study.)

Three conclusions can be drawn from all this. First, liberals are seeking a rationalization for why their candidate lost. They cannot admit that Clinton was a terribly flawed candidate. They cannot admit that their snobbish elitism was recognized, and rejected, by voters. If this evil fake news could have been controlled, the obviously correct candidate would have won, they believe.

Second, the Mainstream Media, and liberals generally, long for the bygone days when a few gatekeepers decided what was news, and what was true, and how events should be understood. They hate having to complete with alternative conservative sources over these issues, and hate that ordinary citizens on social media can entirely undermine the mainstream narrative.

Finally, this is an example of the ugly authoritarianism of contemporary liberalism. Indeed, it is significant that liberals will not call themselves “liberals,” since they have abandoned, in huge numbers, the central doctrine of classical liberalism. As propounded by Jefferson: “we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

Liberals increasing insist they need not tolerate error. And they believe themselves authorized to decide what is in error.

Discrimination Against Religion at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

MADISON, Wis. – Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday on behalf of two students at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire who are being denied credit for mandatory community service simply because their activities involved religion. Under the policy, a student can, for example, earn credit for teaching unless the teaching involves religious instruction, or singing in a choir unless the choir is religious.

“No public university should ever use a community service program as a vehicle to advance and instill anti-religious bias,” said ADF Legal Counsel Travis Barham. “If the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire wants to require its students to perform community service, it must treat all forms of community service as equally valuable. The Constitution and federal court precedent prohibit it from targeting religious community service and denying students credit for it. That kind of animosity toward and discrimination against religion is unconstitutional.”

In the spring, student Alexandra Liebl sought to obtain service-learning credit for the 30 hours she spent volunteering with a second-grade religious education class at a local Roman Catholic church. University officials denied her request, citing the university’s Service-Learning Policy. Upon hearing of this decision and others like it, another student, Madelyn Rysavy, realized that she would not receive credit for the approximately 24 hours she spent volunteering in the same church’s Sunday School classes; therefore, she has yet to submit those hours for credit but would like to have them approved.

Although the Service-Learning Policy explains that “students’ sincerely held beliefs, preferences, and values will be reasonably accommodated in accepting service-learning proposals” and that “acceptance of a service-learning proposal…does not imply endorsement either of the proposed activities or of the recipient by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire,” the policy nonetheless unconstitutionally singles out religious beliefs, preferences, and values for exclusion by specifying that “this public university will not award credit for time spent directly involved in promoting religious doctrine, proselytizing, or worship.”

Although Supreme Court precedents on government and religion are a mess, nothing in the Constitution requires any government body to discriminate against religion. When they do that, it shows their anti-religious bias, not any sort of respect for the Constitution.

As for “promoting religious doctrine, proselytizing, or worship:” are students allowed to “promote” anything else? Would they get credit, for example, for working for an environmentalist group “promoting awareness” of “climate change?” Suppose an organization was not involved in “worship” but rather Transcendental Meditation? The answers are obvious.

If they were working in a program teaching some secular subject, of course credit would be allowed. Credit would doubtless be allowed for volunteering with a local LGBT center, even if the operation worked to flatly contradict children’s religious beliefs. And “accommodating” students’ “sincerely held beliefs” would doubtless be automatic if those beliefs were of a more politically correct sort.

Bye, Bye

Bias at Twitter

Of course, this is the same Twitter that allows #AssassinateTrump to trend. If you read messages with that hashtag on Twitter, the first ones you see berate Twitter for doing that. But if you keep going, you will see lots of messages from people really wanting Trump to be killed.

[Note: Twitter login required to see posts.]

Another problem is the fact that once one starts banning “hate speech,” you face the need to define it. In the world of the politically correct, saying nasty things about Christians is fine, but saying critical things about Muslims is “hate speech.” It’s fine to say nasty things about whites and males, but racial minorities and women are protected.

It’s absurdly unlikely, in other words, that any neutral, fair ban on “hate speech” will ever be enforced.

Which is why racist speech (including speech that is really racist, and not just called “racist” by the politically correct) should be allowed, on Twitter and elsewhere. People who disagree with such speech have equal free speech rights to contest such speech. Indeed, social media like Twitter and Facebook make that very easy.

Vicki McKenna Bullied, Insulted by Thugs on Madison Campus

This confrontation was in the wake of a speech by Ben Shapiro at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Leftist students disrupted the speech, as is typical on college campuses these days.

The black thugs in this video remind one of the bullies at the University of Missouri. Presumably, these black students are not typical of black students at Madison. But on a modern college campus, there is a sense of racial entitlement among black students. The idea seems to be “we are victims, so the rules don’t apply to us.”

Media Arrogance and the Trump Victory

The writer notes that a lot of Americans, and Trump voters, hate the media. He then asks:

And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.

It’s a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing. There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward, and that it’s our duty to catalogue and ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?

We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.

You’d think that Trump’s victory – the one we all discounted too far in advance – would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But of course that’s not how it works. To us, speaking broadly, our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just stronger than we realized.

This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!

That’s the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them racist enough, they’ll eventually shut up and get in line. It’s similar to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the proper framing of a story are attacked by mobs of smugly incredulous pundits. Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get shouted down and disappear, which informs our attitudes toward all disagreement.

Journalists increasingly don’t even believe in the possibility of reasoned disagreement, and as such ascribe cynical motives to those who think about things a different way. We see this in the ongoing veneration of “facts,” the ones peddled by explainer websites and data journalists who believe themselves to be curiously post-ideological.

That the explainers and data journalists so frequently get things hilariously wrong never invites the soul-searching you’d think it would. Instead, it all just somehow leads us to more smugness, more meanness, more certainty from the reporters and pundits. Faced with defeat, we retreat further into our bubble, assumptions left unchecked. No, it’s the voters who are wrong. [emphasis in original]

The media (and liberals generally) have been going through the motions of taking stock and rethinking and reassessing some of their attitudes and practices.

But the toxic cultural prejudices that afflict the media (and liberals generally) are deeply ingrained, and part of a very insular and parochial culture. The odds favor only the most superficial self-examination, after which they will go back to their smug elitism.

Monday, November 14, 2016

A University of Rochester professor stepped down from his director position after posting a controversial statement on Facebook regarding the Presidential election.

Ted Pawlicki resigned as the undergraduate Program Director for the Department of Computer Science on Friday. The story was first reported by student paper the Campus Times.

The comment, which has since been deleted, read: “A bus ticket from Rochester to Canada is $16. If this is not your America, then I will pay for your ticket if you promise never to come back.”

Students posted screenshots of the post as well as comments. Pawlicki wrote in a department-wide email that “These remarks were ill-considered, and I deeply regret any and all hurt they occasioned.”

On Monday, News10NBC Investigative Reporter, Jennifer Lewke sat down with Pawlicki to discuss his comments and why he chose to step down.

Pawliki says he didn’t like that students were planning a “Not My America” protest on a day that is reserved for honoring those who defend America, “to say ‘not my America’ on veterans day was very offensive,” he says and that’s why he decided to comment on the Facebook page.

“The ‘move to Canada’ joke has been around since the Reagan administration; celebrities always threaten to move to Canada if their candidate doesn’t win. It was in the context of what I consider legitimate political humor,” he adds.

Pawliki tells News10NBC he didn’t think much of the comments initially. “I went to teach and I got back about an hour and a half later and I think there were 120 posts, at that point, I realized perhaps I touched a nerve, I should explain. I believe entirely in the complete equality of all people,” and he says, he tried to say so but was shocked when students didn’t seem to want to listen.

“I believe its part of my job to teach students to engage in robust discussion and to challenge them on their positions and to have my positions challenged by them and to train them to question authority and stand up to authority in a forthright and respectable manor,” he says.

But instead, at least one complaint was filed against him with the university and he agreed to step down from his leadership role. He just hopes this incident doesn’t scare off other students and faculty from sharing opinions.

Pawliki: “The discussion of safe spaces and coddling and students being fearful of challenge is a debate that is being discussed across all campuses.”
Jennifer Lewke: “Because you spoke your mind, you’ve lost this program coordinator position and that’s got to be tough to deal with knowing that you’ve had this position for 18 years and this one comment seems to have taken that away.”

Pawliki: “It’s a little tough, but as I said, it happened on Veterans Day and a minor disturbance in my life is nothing compared to the sacrifice our service people have provided.”

While Pawlicki will no longer be director, he is still teaching.

In a statement, the University of Rochester says, “The decision to step down from his position as undergraduate program director in computer science was Ted Pawlicki’s, based on his own determination of whether he could continue to be effective in that role after his public comments, which he acknowledged were ill-considered and for which he apologized. He remains a member of the University of Rochester computer science teaching faculty.”

Pawlicki, who made a perfectly sensible jibe about the self-righteous protestors, should never have apologized, and never have voluntarily stepped down.

In essence, what he did was similar to a woman who has been raped but fails to report the rape to authorities, since that embroils her in a legal hassle. The fact that so many women do not report rape gives potential rapists the (unfortunately correct) idea that they might well get away with it.

Likewise Pawlicki’s apology, and his willingness to step down, gives the campus fascists the idea (also unfortunately correct) that they can exact retribution on anybody on campus who expresses any politically incorrect idea.

It is true that tenure does not give Pawlicki any right to an administrative position, only the right to continue to teach as a faculty member. But if he was told he must resign by the Rochester administration, he should not have made it easy for them. He should have refused, and forced them to fire him from his administrative position.

In his defense, standing up to the campus bullies is not easy, especially when university administrations are usually on the side of the bullies. But saving any semblance of free expression on campus requires that some people do it.

Particularly arrogant is the language about “strategies for responding to student resistance to learning about the protest strategies of these groups.” Translation: students might resist being indoctrinated with a Black Lives Matter agenda, and so such “resistance” must be overcome. For these folks, there is no legitimate disagreement with their agenda.

That Mountin felt the need to apologize for “all lives matter” is just more evidence that the people running Marquette are no different from those at any secular, hyper politically correct institution. Their pandering to the campus leftists is partly due to their own ideological views, and partly due to their bureaucratic timidity. But the exact mix doesn’t really matter.

Another Bogus College “Hate Crime”

Marcus Owens is an African-American student at the University of Iowa, and he told police he was set upon by three white men when he left a bar to go into an alley to use his cellphone. The men beat him severely as they hurled racial epithets, he said. And with his front teeth broken, his lip cut so badly it required stitches and his face swollen, he certainly looked the part of the victim.

The attack was given considerable coverage in Iowa City and Chicago-area media, and the Iowa City police “treated the investigation as a major case with the dedication of all available resources,” according to a department news release.

By examining multiple surveillance videos, what police said they found was that Owens, apparently quite drunk, was an instigator, not a victim, in three fistfights inside a bar and on a downtown street.

“The original altercations stemmed from a disagreement between two students who are members of fraternities,” said the police news release. “According to witnesses, the ‘n-word’ was used by one individual at the time of the second altercation … (but) the FBI determined that the facts of this investigation did not meet the criteria necessary to be labeled as a hate crime.”

The police news release also said, “According to multiple witness accounts, Owens was reported to have made statements being concerned about his injuries sustained during the altercations and how he was going to inform his family.”

Of course, the Social Justice Warriors got engaged:

Student and faculty supporters staged a protest on his behalf charging the university with insufficient urgency in response to a racially inspired attack (which did not take place on campus). They created a Twitter hashtag #explainiowa to whip up concern and anger.

“It is being applied to communicate moral indignation of Marcus Owens’ attack,” Cassie Barnhardt, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership studies, told the Iowa City Press-Citizen. The hashtag was intended “to provoke a response from university administrators, and it is serving as an invitation of sorts to prompt others in the community to think about and pay attention to acts of racial aggression and bias.”

There have been many such bogus racial incidents in the last few years. They are fueled by the fact that campus leftists immediately accept the narrative of black racial victimization, and don’t feel the need to wait until the facts are in. After all, instances of anti-black racism make them feel self-righteous. Blacks exploiting race undercuts a narrative in which they have a huge emotional investment. The campus leftists are, in effect, both encouraging bogus claims of racial victimization, and being exploited by people like Marcus Owens.

The former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan told his bigoted followers that not voting for Trump would be “treason to your heritage” and implored them to volunteer for the billionaire candidate because they would find like-minded haters in the campaign.

Even so, multiple white nationalists have found appeal in Trump’s message and have aligned their support with the presidential candidate.

The latest is David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, who called for listeners of his radio show to support Trump and volunteer for his campaign.

‘Go in there, you’re gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have,’ Duke said Wednesday on the David Duke Radio Program, as first reported by Buzzfeed.

Duke reasoned that ‘voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage.’

And so it went in the mainstream media universe, Trump’s rejection of Duke irrelevant to their stories.

Did Trump stumble in that now-famous CNN Jake Tapper interview when asked about Duke? Yes. But he not only corrected the next day, as documented here by McClatchy he was well on record speaking out against Duke not only before the Tapper interview but as long ago as the early 1990’s. Wrote McClatchy’s reporter, with bold print for emphasis supplied by me:

Trump eagerly denounced Duke on more than one occasion decades ago, according to Factcheck.org.

In 2000, Trump told NBC’s “Today” that he wouldn’t seek the Reform Party nomination because he said the party was “self-destructing.”

Matt LAUER: “When you say the party is self-destructing, what do you see as the biggest problem with the Reform Party right now?”

Trump: “Well, you’ve got David Duke just joined – a bigot, a racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party.”

The New York Times also reported at the time that Trump issued a news release referring to Duke as “a Klansman” and not the “company I wish to keep.”

Trump also spoke out against Duke in 1991 – three days after Duke lost a race for governor in Louisiana.

CNN’s Larry KING: “Did the David Duke thing bother you? Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him.”

Trump: “I hate seeing what it represents, but I guess it just shows there’s a lot of hostility in this country. There’s a tremendous amount of hostility in the United States.”

So with all this attention to Trump on David Duke, surely you read the news about John Bachtell, right? He endorsed Hillary and the headlines were everywhere. Oh, wait, sorry. Mr. Bachtell’s Hillary endorsement was apparently not newsy enough to make the mainstream media headlines. Curious, yes? If the endorsement of Trump by the ex-head of the Ku Klux Klan is big news, one would expect a Hillary endorsement by the head of the Communist Party USA would be a big deal as well.

That’s right. Hillary-supporter Bachtell is, as seen here, the very proud “national chair of the Communist Party USA.” That’s right, Mr. Bachtell is a literal card-carrying Communist. You recall the Communists, yes? The folks who produced Stalin and Mao? The advocates of a political philosophy that is described in The Black Book of Communism as being responsible for “between 85 million and 100 million” deaths in “the most colossal case of political carnage in history.” Ring a bell? The Soviet Union? The Cold War? The Iron Curtain? Korea? Vietnam? The Khmer Rouge? Come on, you remember.

Apparently the mainstream media does not remember what Mr. Bachtell’s Communist Party represents — or maybe it’s something else. Maybe, just maybe, the media doesn’t care about Hillary receiving the Communist Party chairman’s endorsement because, well, if you’re a lefty to begin with there’s nothing seen as out of the ordinary much less wrong with this.

Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Marquette Bureaucrats Trash Catholic Teaching on Gender

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin, November 1, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Administrators at Marquette University have rebuked an on-campus demonstration held on Thursday opposing the Catholic university’s embrace of gender ideology.

The protesters, from the American TFP’s Student Action, who were on a tour of Wisconsin, held a 14-foot banner with the quote “God made them male and female” from Genesis 5:2. The scripture quote was followed by, “Stop the ravages of transgender ideology.”

Marquette introduced gender-neutral restrooms to accommodate “transgender” students last year. Signage was replaced, and instead of bathrooms being labeled “Men” and “Women,” they became “Bathroom A” or “B,” and “Bathroom 1” or “2.”

The TFP Student Action demonstration included flyers with information on how transgenderism is dangerous to the family, triggering some hostility and at least one faculty member who attempted to block their message.

A counter-protest by students was joined by the university provost, who said the TFP Student Action demonstration consisted of “messages of discrimination” that do not reflect “who” Marquette is.

“Messages of discrimination are completely out of alignment with who we are,” Dan Myers blogged.

Myers also demeaned the TFP Student Action demonstrators and presumed to speak for their intent, terming them “this small group” who “arrived at Marquette University with one goal in mind — to show their disdain for our LGBTQ community, particularly its transgender members.”

He joined the counter-protest by students, lending his signature to their banner that stated, “Transphobia, biphobia & homophobia are not Marquette values,” something he glowingly described in his blog, concluding, “I can’t express how proud I was to see our community rally together.”

Myers was not the only Marquette administrator to show disdain for TFP Student Action’s message, with Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion Executive Director Dr. William Welburn telling the student news service Marquette Wire, “If you’re going to come to our university, you should respect our position on human dignity and what we teach our students.”

Myers had embedded his tweet in the blog post, “All MU members are welcome, any skin color, sexuality or religion. No outside protest changes that,” linking to the Marquette University Diversity Statement. He also included a tweet from Marquette Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Xavier Cole on the matter in his blog post. Cole also linked to the diversity statement, saying, “I support this statement as well as diversity and inclusion at Marquette.”

Marquette University did not respond to LifeSiteNews’ inquiry into how the message constituted discrimination or disrespects the university’s position on human dignity, the specifics of Marquette’s position on gender fluidity, and whether the scripture quote conflicts with any Marquette policies.

The reason they did not respond is simple: in the world of the politically correct, to refuse to affirm and pander to sexual deviation is the same as “discrimination.” If some person with a penis and Y chromosomes thinks he’s a woman, it would be actual discrimination to (say) refuse to admit him to Marquette, or withhold a scholarship, or refuse to let him participate in student government.

But in the world of the politically correct, you are required to agree that he’s a woman, reconfigure bathrooms and dorms to suit him, and tell women to junk their desire for privacy when he wants to enter the ladies’ room.

He must, like every other politically correct victim group, be pandered to.

The rhetoric about “diversity” and “inclusion” is stunningly hypocritical, since Marquette is being grossly exclusionary toward people who agree with Catholic teaching on gender.

Pope Francis has strongly criticized modern theories that consider people’s gender identities to exist along a spectrum, saying such theories do not “recognize the order of creation.”

Speaking of gender theory in an interview in a new book released in Italy, the pope even compares such theories to genetic manipulation and nuclear weapons.

Gender theory is a broad term for an academic school of thought that considers how people learn to identify themselves sexually and how they may become typed into certain roles based on societal expectations.

“God has placed man and woman at the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth,” Francis says. “The design of the Creator is written in nature.”

According to Marquette Wire, the counter-demonstration was quickly organized by Enrique Tejada III, a staff person at the Student Affairs Intercultural Engagement office. How politically correct are the people in this office? They all list their “preferred pronouns.” While most are happy with the traditional ones (“he,” “she,” etc.) Tejada wants “(They/Them/Their(s)).”

This is yet another way in which the politically correct crowd is demanding, not the lack of discrimination, but rather oppressive impositions on the rest of society. Marquette’s English Department has already signed onto this nonsense.

The smarmy self-righteousness of people like Myers and Welburn can’t conceal the fact that they are fundamentally secular people who want Marquette to be a fundamentally secular university, with the proviso that a bit of Catholic window dressing is fine, so long as it doesn’t interfere with pandering to the secular, politically correct left.